Tania Bruguera’s gridded collage composed of used tea bags is a study for Poetic Justice, a large-scale installation she created for the 2003 Istanbul Biennial. In that work, tea bags lined the walls of a long, corridor-like room, interspersed with tiny video monitors displaying archival news footage. Bruguera became interested in tea as a metaphor for the repackaging of culture while at an artist residency in India. British tea culture, adopted from China and cultivated throughout the British Empire, was dependent on the importation of tea plants from South and Southeast Asia, which were then packaged and distributed back into India as part of British colonial customs connoting foreignness and sophistication. “As happened in India with tea,” observes Bruguera, “our realities are more and more co-opted, re-packed, and sent back to us with pre-digested meaning; they are defined by the media. Like the British Empire before, now corporations control the news and therefore History.”

The idea for this piece came about during a four-week residency in India… . As happened in India with tea, our own realities are, more and more, co-opted, repacked, and sent back to us with predigested meaning; they are defined by the media. Like the British Empire before, now corporations control the news, and therefore history. The sensual materials, like the smell of tea, were meant to address the subtlety of corporate co-option. –Tania Bruguera